iOS 9 Hacked to Enable 3D Touch on the iPad Pro

Notoriously bold and daring iOS hacker/developer Hamza Sood is back, once again, this time with a really neat hack that brings certain 3D Touch, “Peek and Pop” gestures to the iPad Pro, facilitated by pressure sensitive interactions with the Apple Pencil.

This is a truly unique trick for two reasons — one being that the 3D Touch feature is currently available only on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and two, because the hack paves the way to conducting unheard of, almost paradoxical actions using the Apple Pencil, a device that was more created with drawing and writing in mind above anything else.

This slick trick is brought to you in part by the fact that Apple Pencil reports pressure-related data back to the system, which is, conceptually speaking, intended to add an extra dimension of depth and immersion when painting or drawing. There exist sensors built into the pencil tip, not present in the iPad Pro’s display, so this hack wouldn’t work with just your fingers as is the case on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

For whatever reason, Apple doesn’t seem to be keen on the concept of exploiting the Apple Pencil’s technological boundaries beyond drawing or writing; however the stylus can still be used as a generic pointing and navigating tool throughout the iOS platform.

Apple in highly unlikely to bring an official upgrade with 3D Touch to the iPad Pro, even if only for marketing purposes alone. Either way, though, the hacking community has once again made the conceptually impossible, possible, thanks to the wonderful world of work-arounds!

The full code for the hack can be found here, via GitHub, and a video of the hack in action is embedded below.